


What Happens in Vegas

by winchestersinthedrift



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, F/M, First Time, Hand Jobs, M/M, Multi, Oral Sex, Pining Dean, Sweat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 07:26:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4778702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchestersinthedrift/pseuds/winchestersinthedrift
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s their first trip to Vegas just the two of them, a few months since a demon riding a 14-wheeler smashed up their lives. John is gone and suddenly this fucked-up thing between them wants a name. There’s a creepy cult in the middle of the desert, buffets, gambling, a broken AC, Sam’s impromptu undercover stint as a third-string male stripper, and Dean maybe-sort-of-accidentally ending up in a Treasure Island porno. There’s a red-ochre sunset over the miles-wide desert and two boys hot-blooded beneath it cutting deals with devils and each other.   It’s Vegas Week, Winchesters style, and this time what happens in Vegas won’t stay there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Happens in Vegas

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Wincest Big Bang 2015. Huge thanks to my beta themegalosaurus who read it many times, told me it wasn’t trash, and encouraged my fixation on sweaty pining.
> 
> On tumblr at wincestninja.

 

The first three days are weird and off-and-on shitty.

It isn’t Vegas itself, though being there throws a sharp filter over the thing. Vegas should be familiar, cause they’ve been here so often before, but they’ve always been here with Dad and now the place is pin-pricked with reminders of his absence. Not his physical absence - that they’re used to, have been used to it from the time that they were kids. But, in a way, that’s the kicker. The fact that he was so often gone makes this ‘dead’ thing even harder, harder at least to remember it’s true. Up till now Dad’s been out there like some omnipotent Old Testament god, often invisible, sure, but reassuringly active and prone to reappear beside them at any given time. Dean keeps picking up the phone to leave a message before he remembers. Sometimes he feels like the only thing to do is just rip off the bandaid, drive to every dot on the map and see that Dad isn’t there.  

If he could know that, see it with his own eyes, then maybe, maybe the pressure building at his temples would ease and maybe he could goddamn breathe again.

It isn’t just about Dad, either, or even just about Sam and what all this is gonna do to him. It’s about something new between him and Sam, something that lies inside him coiled and ready to strike and in the meantime it’s slowly leaking poison, soaking through his skin and bones from the inside out. The thing had shifted uneasily in his belly when he’d woken up in that hospital bed and found himself back in his body, back in his fingers and shoulders and toes, attached to his lungs and his heart and his cock again, soul nestled back into meat and vessels pumping sluggish earth-bound blood. Through the rest of that awful day and the just as awful days after Sam had stayed tethered to his bed, physically pinned to him most of the time, touching his legs, his elbows, even his hands, desperate to hold him there and to use him as an anchor, and Dean had hurt in a hundred ways and most of them weren’t physical, but a part of him had thrummed back in response to his brother’s touch. When he’d slung his legs over the side of the bed on the day they left and sat for an extra couple of beats with Sam’s arm under his shoulders; when he’d tested his legs, one, two, and Sam’s arm had followed him, something had felt different; when he’d rolled his shoulders ( _roll through the pain son_ ) and staggered a little, stepping away from Sam ( _why_ had he stepped away from Sam?), he’d felt an unexpected loss that he couldn’t quite, didn’t quite want to name.

He’d thought about it a lot, without naming it. He’d thought about it lying on motel beds staring at water-stained ceilings or against the inclined seat of the Impala with Sam sleeping an arm’s length away, curled up against the back of the seat with his knees up almost against the door and his hair brushing Dean’s thigh.

Sometimes he’d watch the way Sam’s breath sent a stray hair or two from his bangs flying, battered in a tiny warm whirl, or how he’d always pull the cuffs of his hoodie down over the heels of his hands. Sometimes he’d let his fingers drop down an inch, another inch, hover in the air just above Sam’s head so that the wispy hairs curling up, loosed and tumbled in sleep, would just barely trace across the palm of his hand and send little tendrils of fleeting sensation up the nerves of his arm. He’d wonder idly when he stopped playing with Sam’s hair -- he’d done it when Sam was tiny, a toddler who’d usually fall asleep draped over Dean one way or another, in his lap or over his back or once with his head hanging right over the bed. Dean’s hand in his hair would settle him, back then. (‘Got your momma’s hair,’ John used to say. It seemed inevitable and right to Dean back then that he should have his father’s, though not its colour.) When Sammy was a little older, maybe ten or twelve - yeah, Dean could remember still playing with Sam’s hair then, pulling it or raking it up to tease his little brother. When Sam had been 14 and kissed his first girl - fuck yeah, he had touched it then, had grabbed it in both hands and knuckled Sam across the scalp.

But it’s been awhile, long enough that he isn’t sure. And now there’s this strange opaqueness between them, like he and Sam are magnets with opposite charges and the force field between them slips and slides their bodies apart even as it drags them towards each other.

He’s really hoping Vegas will get them past it, whatever it is.

The first few days they do the normal Vegas things, or at least the things that are par for the course on Winchester Vegas trips. They check in at the Luxor this time, not the crappy motels way off the strip of early years, cause awhile back Dean played enough poker on the high-roller tables to get comp’ed a room and some shows, and by way of an enamoured hospitality clerk he’d managed to leverage _that_ into a ten-year Executive Club card.

(‘No honeymoon suite?’ Sam had teased him, pouting, and Dean had shot a glare backwards and said ‘beats the Toucan Motel, dude.’ )

The first night they go to Coyote Ugly, because they watched the movie on the one cable channel the motel had a few months back and Dean wants to see it. When they leave two hours later it’s with two girls, Tiara and Mandy, though Sam is by this point too drunk to recall these reliably and resorts almost immediately to calling Mandy “pretty lady”. This is the fault not so much of the three beers at Coyote Ugly as it is the weak slushy highballs he’s been drinking since noon, served in two-foot tall hollow plastic Eiffel Towers and so weak and icy that they give the illusion of not even being alcohol. Sam, though, has had fourteen of them. He’d carried the empties around for the first few hours until this exceeded even the most generous definition of practicality and then he abandoned them in a neat row on the lip of the Bellagio fountain.

They go slowly down the strip. Sam is out of it, spacey and swaying a little against Mandy tucked under his arm, petting the top of her head and murmuring drunkenly at her. Dean is resolutely not looking at Sam, eyes set and icy, stopping at every traffic light and kissing Tiara up against the lightpost, the greasy tack of her lipstick getting into his mouth. It’s nice, kissing her is nice. Girls have never stopped being nice. That isn’t the problem. The problem’s whatever got stuck inside his soul when he was in that hospital bed. His soul was wandering the green-mint halls, chatting up a Reaper, but when she put him back inside his ribs she must have made some awful twist, by accident or on purpose, cause ever since he’s been back he’s got the hots for his little brother.

There. He said it. Only to himself, and in his head, sitting on the edge of the sidewalk in front of the Venetian. He sits there and tries to turn his brain off, tries to let the beer take the edge off the dread of it, but his brain hums along, weighing the different ways this is awful against each other. _Which is worst_ says the fetid voice in the pit of his stomach, _which is the worst part_? How this will fuck up Sam if he ever finds out; what dad would think if he knew; how many laws of god and nature he’s currently breaking; or the ways this poison will sicken and spoil the one best thing in his life? He thinks for a minute he might throw up, leans forward a bit and puts his head in his hands, feels the weight of it press against his palms.

Sam and the girls are behind him, standing in front of the U-shaped ‘canal’ that runs around the front of the hotel. Sam’s drunkenly explaining the history of Venice. He sounds confident, for whatever that’s worth. Dean listens to him for awhile, letting himself relax into the familiar cadence of Sam’s voice, mellow and sure of itself. He remembers how Sam’s voice was his tether to hope the days he wasn’t attached to his body, in the hospital; how the moment he’d felt it might be ok was hearing the disbelieving laughter in that voice when he’d used the ouija board to talk to Sam. Sam’s voice in the first strange, nauseating minutes that he’d blinked eyelids of meat and blood again, got used to the feel of a muscle in his mouth, readjusted to corporeality. Sam’s voice in the car, talking to dad. Sam’s --

He hears steps behind him and then Tiara is sitting beside him on the edge of the sidewalk. She’s cute and curvy and smells really good and her hand is right up in the crease of his thigh. He turns his head towards her and rests his chin on the top of her head and she leans in and kisses the underside of his jaw. He dips his head and catches her mouth with his and kisses back, slipping a hand behind to the base of her skull and deepening the kiss, and her hand shifts right over his cock and palms it through his jeans.

‘Hhhrng,’ he says, dazed and feeling the beer. ‘Sam! we’re heading up to the Lux, you coming with?’

When he looks up Sam and Mandy are making out on the edge of the canal, Mandy straddling Sam’s lap and his hands pushing the bottom of her dress up over her ass.

‘ _Sam_!’ Dean says, louder this time. ‘C’mon, hotel.’

They get back to the hotel just as the first hint of watery grey is showing up on the horizon, maybe 4 in the morning. It’s the quietest Vegas gets, just service people and bakers and janitors walking empty streets like sleepy ghosts. Dean keeps his hands and eyes on Tiara and it’s not hard, she’s cute and into it and responsive, just how he likes, but he wishes he didn’t have to ride an elevator with Sam dry-humping his girl into the handrail or have to hear his dirty (loud, filthy, drunken) talk lurching down the deserted hallways.

When they get back to the room they fuck, two on each bed, and Dean is glad for the booze, cause they’ve done this before but he’s never done it before when he wanted his brother. Tiara comes while he’s going down on her and again when they fuck and then just lays there half-asleep and smiling while he keeps pumping. Sam and Mandy take longer, cause he teased her for awhile before he’d even get started. When Dean finally comes it’s to the sound of Mandy screaming under Sam.

He lies in bed for a second and then he goes into the bathroom and turns on the water in the bath as hard as it will go, lets the sound numb the noise from outside while he pukes into the toilet.

The morning of the second day Dean wakes up somewhere north of noon and lays for awhile perfectly still, one eye open a slit and the other closed so firmly he isn’t sure it will open again at all. His head is banging dully and his stomach is coiling greenly under his ribs, but he can handle that. ( _Monsters don’t wait for hangovers, boys_.) What bothers him more, what’s more of a threat is the way he can’t stop looking over at the other bed where Sam is sprawled, flat on his back, limbs splayed out over the mattress, the sole of one foot up against the headboard. Dean can see the beat of his chest from here, the slight distension of his belly and the place where the band of his boxers has started to fray and --

Dean rolls away so fast that his stomach heaves, an act maybe of self-preservation, cause he’d caught sight without thinkingly looking of the straining tent in Sam’s boxers and _jesus_ it isn’t like he hasn’t seen Sam get morning wood a hundred times, scratch that, a thousand times, but he hasn’t seen it yet alone in a hotel room since it’s been just him and Sam, and certainly not in the slick heat of a Vegas afternoon, with the room already smelling like sweat and sex.

Without turning around he sits up, carefully, by inches, wishing that the floor was cold tile instead of carpet. Wait, the bathroom. He makes it there before he pukes, barely, and then he lies on the floor awhile and thinks about the weirdness of things and how nothing in the hunting world or the other one has prepared him for this, which honestly is just fucking unfair cause Dean has spent his life sticking to the rules that matter (no matter how far to the hell the others can go) but no one has told him the rules for this.

Fuck damn it.

When the tiles under his chest have grown warm and damp from his own body heat Dean gets up and shuffles back into the bedroom and stands at the foot of Sam’s bed. He leans forward a bit so that his thighs tense against the mattress and he looks at Sam and thinks in an abstract way about crawling up over him and dragging his boxers down; thinks about nudging his knees apart so that Sam’s thighs fall open, lax and strangely smooth and paler than the skin anywhere else on his body; thinks about Sam’s cock stiff and bobbing and the salty smear that he’d taste on his lips, lying with his arms hooked over Sam’s hips. Instead --

‘Sam,’ Dean says in a monotone of passive annoyance, kicking once against the foot of the bed.

By the time that Sam has showered and used all three packs of instant coffee to brew a single pot, Dean has gotten himself mostly back to normal. He’s hungover; he always gets weird and a little maudlin when he’s hungover. He had a good time last night, he remembers that much; it just hasn’t knocked ...the other out of his head as much as he’d hoped, hasn’t knocked him and Sam quite back into their usual polarity. Well, they still have most of a week, and he’s a firm believer in the power of a drink and a good time. He isn’t ready to lay down and give up quite yet.

At breakfast Sam is quiet and green around the gills but still apparently the most bewitching thing Dean’s body has ever been close to because he can’t look at his brother without feeling his palms start to dampen and picturing, involuntarily, laying Sam out on these ass-ugly padded bench seats and tasting him all over, the shower-damp curls along his hairline and the shadowed hollow at the base of his neck and the lanky lines of muscle that rope down his forearms.

They’re eating in one of the dozens of cookie-cutter buffet restaurants that litter the casino floors (this morning, it’s in Excalibur). Dean eats his way steadily through two plates of eggs and bacon while Sam eats toast and stares miserably into his coffee.

‘OK?’ says Dean, after awhile, and Sam’s eyes flicker up.

‘Yeah, just - you know.’ He picks up a piece of toast and nibbles along its edge. ‘You have a good time last night?’

Dean looks for a hidden meaning in his eyes before he realises Sam means it straightforwardly.

‘Yeeeeah,’ he says, drawl thick and eyebrows raised. He leaves a beat. ‘Mandy seemed to have a good time.’

He says it the way he always would have said it, half teasing and half _my-little-brother-the-sex-god_ , and Sam looks up and quirks his eyebrows.

‘Oh, she did,’ he grins, and Dean thinks this getting-over-it plan isn’t going very well.

They need a new fan for the laptop, cause this one isn’t holding up to the Vegas heat, so they drive ten minutes to a little strip mall outside the ring of hotels, where the lines of the tourist city begin to blend into the suburbs. Dean waits outside the store, his ass against the passenger door and he’s watching Sam across the asphalt parking lots and jesus christ it’s hot out. He’s been to Vegas most summers of his life but the heat still hits him like a physical weight. He’s watching Sam across the asphalt and Sam’s standing in the doorway of the computer shop and talking to the salesgirl who followed him out and fuck Dean can’t blame her. Sam’s laughing now at something the girl just said and the way he’s carrying the pile of boxes in his arms makes his shoulder-blades pull back against his shirt and the way that Dean keeps noticing this makes him hot and irritable and want to sleep, mostly. In an air-conditioned room.

That second night they go to the Pirate Show at Treasure Island and it’s exactly like Dean remembers it from the year he was 16 and snuck down here alone after Dad and Sam were asleep at the shitty off-strip motel: a trio of replica pirate ships set up in a man-made lagoon, lingerie-clad women clinging to their rigging and writhing in faux-ecstasy against the death-head sails while shirtless, beefcake-y men swam out to their rescue. It’s ridiculous and garish and Sam makes horrified faces at him over the heads of other people for most of the show. It’s the most normal he’s felt since they got there.

Afterwards as they’re headed for the casino floor they step into a lift and are followed in by three of the pirate girls, still wet from their dunk in the lagoon. One of them gives Sam a long look and whispers something to the others, giggling. He’s looking like some kind of hybrid redneck frat boy, dressed in a white tank and board shorts and holding the necks of three beers between the fingers of one hand. His hair is damp and his skin is slick with sweat and spray and Dean’s being careful not to brush up against him along the rail of the elevator.

The girl doesn’t seem to mind his look either cause she steps up in front of him between floors 1 and 2 and asks if he thinks her mouth would fit around his bottle. Dean almost chokes and Sam turns bright red, but when Dean gets off Sam looks at him and shrugs and Dean uses the last of his fading happy face to wink and mouth ‘that’s my boy’.

It takes him a minute to notice that the other two pirate girls have followed him off.

‘Hey,’ one of them says, and smiles. It’s a smile he doesn’t dislike. She’s cute and so’s the other one and they’re both looking at him like they mean it. There’s not much in his mind right now cause he’s mostly aggressively emptying it of _samsamsam_. All he really wants is to get good and fucked up, hard enough that his brain will stop. That his heart and skin and cock will stop. Will stop. Needing Sam.

‘Hey girls,’ he says, back, and that’s all they need, that and the patented Dean Winchester panties-dropping smile. ‘Whattaya say we find somewhere round here to give us a drink?’

They go to the bar at Treasure Island first and then over to Caesar’s Palace, where Dean drinks 8 shots of tequila and one of the girls gives him a lap dance in the VIP area. He can’t remember how they ended up in the VIP area, but someone keeps bringing him drinks and the voice in his head is just about muffled down to whispering level. He hasn’t got whiskey dick, at least - the lap dance puts that ghost to rest and the part of him that still gives a shit is relieved. He pulls the nearest girl down on his lap and kisses her till she moans. He’s good at this and he knows it. It’s probably the thing he’s received the most verbal praise for in his life, a thought he’s had a couple times before. But the truth is he does enjoy it, enjoys the feel of a girl in his lap, the softness of her thighs around his hips and the noises he can pull out of her with his hands and tongue and lips.

After awhile the other girl comes over and whispers in her ear and the girl on his lap (blonde, the other’s a redhead) reluctantly stands up. Even drunk as he is he notices with satisfaction that her legs are shaking a little.

‘Listen,’ she says, her lips all red from his mouth, ‘come up to our room, yeah? We - we’ve got a bottle of champagne up there, and we can - y’know, talk.’

Yeah, Dean knows. And a threesome seems as good a way as any to find some new sexual fantasies to nudge out the ones that are stuck to his ribs.

When they get to the room - he thinks it’s back at Treasure Island  but things were spinning just a little when they crossed the street so he’s not quite sure - there’s another girl waiting. Dean’s step hitches just a split second as he’s walking into the room. He’s never done it with three girls before, and in theory he’s down but whiskey dick or not he’s not sure that he’s at his best at the moment, can deliver his, uh, best performance. On the other hand they’re all smoking hot and it’s a fucking _foursome_ and his brain hasn’t forgotten Sam’s name yet.

 _Fuck you_ , he says, to no one in particular, and strips off his shirt.

Afterwards when he thinks of it it just comes in patches, like someone spliced pieces from a filmstrip together. The bright red of the blonde’s panties and the way they felt between his teeth. The brunette suddenly wearing a black pirate’s hat that must have been pinned into her hair or something cause while she sucked him off and her head tipped back it didn’t even budge. Then both of them were on him at once, sucking and licking his nipples. One disappeared for a minute and when she came back she had a patch on an elastic cord, the kind kids wear to dress up on halloween as Blackbeard or Captain Jack Sparrow.

‘Wear it?’ said the blonde, and from there on it went fucking quickly, like clockwork, like they’d done this before:one riding him cowboy and the other riding his face, kissing and groping each other above him.

He doesn’t remember being put in a cab, just waking up in the backseat outside the door of the Luxor and stumbling back to his room, their room. Sam’s in his bed by the window and Dean’s heart does this complicated thing where it clenches and glows at the same time.

He doesn’t even take off his boots.

When Dean wakes up on the third morning it’s almost noon, and he’s got a throbbing head and stringy bile at the back of his throat but he’s back in his room with Sam and still with his wallet and gun, so that’s good. Sam’s already awake, bent over the laptop. Dean slings his legs over the edge of the bed, slowly, cautiously tries out his voice.

‘Hrrnorning?’ It works, sort of; that’s reassuring. ‘Thought -’ he tries to remember the end of the night before. A girl, dark heavy eyes and lips like sugary booze. He remembers her. ‘Thought I - er - did I bring...’ he looks around in a slightly anxious daze, as if he expects her to be sleeping beside him or hiding behind the TV cabinet. Or had she been blonde? A little more trickles back - post-coital in a tangle, a - jesus, a really big tangle of limbs, watching - _oh_.  He feels a tiny bit sicker than he already did, which is interesting because he’s been with girls before who wanted to film stuff and never cared very much, but what’s freaking him now is the idea that Sam might see it and think - and think - what?

Sam’s looking sideways at him, indecipherably. Dean wants to blurt out ‘don’t go on xtube and happen to search pirates ok?’ but instead he sits up straighter and shakes his head a little and says, ‘what’s going on?’, cause he recognises the particular set of Sam’s neck and shoulders. Research shoulders. ‘You start on the case?’

It’s true they’re here just for kicks, because it’s Vegas and it seemed the thing to do, keep up the old tradition, the closest thing maybe to an annual holiday they've ever observed; but they’ve also come armed with a lead, a newspaper clipping that Bobby had handed them back at his place. ‘Strange Explosion at Desert Community: Survivor Prosecuted for Obstruction.’ About six months before a group of federal surveyors out in the desert brush had purportedly seen a column of flame hundreds of yards high shoot up just to the southeast of Vegas. It was an empty part of the desert, dotted with outcroppings of red rock and so dry that the earth was cracked in long ragged lines. The only thing anywhere in the vicinity was what the article described as a small religious community founded ten years before.

Dean had raised his eyebrows when Sam had read it aloud to him back at Bobby’s.

‘Typical wackjobs?’

Sam had shrugged. ‘Maybe. Sounds like possible activity though. There’s some stuff from the papers a few years back about mutilated animals out that way. Short on details but if it made the papers - well, might as well check it out if we’re going anyway, right?’ He hadn’t said the other thing they were both thinking - that having an ostensibly job-related reason for going took some of the pressure off the personal angle of the trip, the whole ‘first time without dad’ schtick.

Now, three days in, Dean's hustled a shitload of pool and been drunk more than he's been sober and fucked four girls, three of them on camera, and if that doesn't count as a solid bender he doesn't know what does, and he's still feeling batshit crazy about the way that Sammy’s lips fall open around a beer bottle and how the way that he sighs from deep in his chest makes Dean's groin tighten with heat.

Dean slides further down the bed and sits with his hands folded, head banging dully, watches Sam roll his shoulders stiffly, absently, in front of the laptop. Sam's still in the thin-worn grey tshirt he’d wore to bed and the pair of boxers with lipstick kisses on them that Dean bought him to make him laugh those first few weeks after Jess’ death when Dean had been so desperate to lighten his brother's face. They’re normal sized but on Sam’s long legs they look indecently short, like his cock is gonna swing right out the bottom over the long muscles of his thighs and --

 _Jesus_. He gets up and walks over to the table, and Sam slides over to the next chair and nods at the screen. Dean carefully keeps his eyes on the computer, but the dull knocking in his head slips down to his stomach and he grits his teeth.

‘Think I found a lead to start with,’ Sam says. ‘Sounds like there’s nothing left out at the, uh, the compound. Guess we still wanna check it out but we could do this first and head out there tomorrow. Guy who runs this place is a, uh, some kind of a self-styled entrepreneur.’ He says it with a slight crinkle of his nose that Dean knows means _sleazy motherfucker_. ‘Nathan Harmon. Guy on this messageboard says he knew Nathan back in the day and he’s still got a few connections - apparently the guy’s been bragging that he has a stash of secret files on the cult.’

Dean looks from his brother to the screen with mild interest, back to Sam, back to the screen. His eyes narrow.

‘A male strip club? _That’s_ where this guy works?’

Sam shifts in his chair and idly starts lining decks of cards up, side to side.

‘Runs it,’ he corrects, grinning a little. ‘And it’s not a strip club. It’s a, uh, you know that show at the MGM? Thunder From Down Under?’

Dean isn’t quite sure what expression Sam’s looking for on his face so he settles for amusement. .

‘The Aussie strippers. Yeah.’ They passed a group of them in the lobby last night, posing for photos with middle-aged women in cropped khaki pants.

‘Well, that kind of thing, but, uh, the D-list I guess. A ways off the strip.’

‘So … a strip club.’

‘Well, yeah. OK.’ Sam straightens the last deck and starts stacking them end on end. Dean watches him idly, watches his long fingers and the perfect focus of his eyes on the cards and the way he runs the tip of his tongue just inside his lower lip when he’s concentrating. Dean finds himself getting hard, a-fucking-gain, and he wonders if the Reaper could somehow have put a long-lasting hex on him? Spell for inducing incest?  

He pops the lid off a fresh beer and sticks his legs straight out in front of him.

‘So what’s the plan? We go lurk around outside? Or you wanna take in the show, little brother?’

Dean feels Sam glance over at him but he keeps his eyes trained out the window, and when Sam answers the question his voice is even and level.

‘Neither. Turns out they’re auditioning bartenders tonight.’ He grins. ‘Still got it?’

Dean shoots him the most derisive look he’s got..

Sam,’ he said, ‘the strippers might be dudes but the audience is gonna be babes. Or dudes who like dudes. I got this.’

Dean feels ok, even good about this. Having a job to work puts him back in his element, gives him something to focus on. And he has a good feeling about this one. Sure, it’s a weird venue, but their cover is solid - he and Sam have both slung drinks on so many hustles that he’s lost count. Once when they were  holed up lying low for a few weeks in Alabama he got friendly with a bartender at a local club and they spent a few nights after close behind the bar. She showed him a few flair tricks - juggling bottles and shaking the martinis in swirling gestures around his torso, stuff the people who went to clubs went nuts for. She showed him a few other things too. He ate her out behind the bar most early mornings that week and left at the end of the month with a vastly broadened inventory of sexual positions and a pretty decent flair routine.

He practiced a bit, last night, with bottles of beer and the toothbrush holder from the bathroom. Sam doesn’t have the flashy moves but he’s slung drinks plenty and besides, the kid has a knack for picking things up spooky fast. Dean isn’t worried about Sam.

They _have_ worried a little about blending in, cause their faded tshirts and wide-leg jeans aren’t quite the cutting edge of Vegas club attire.

‘It’s third-string,’ Sam has said twice, with a hint of anxiety. ‘Nothing too good, I mean, flashy but not too expensive. What do people _wear_ to a male stripper show?’

 

When they walk into the venue that night it’s already filling up - a long low-ceilinged room studded with frayed-cushioned chairs and a bar off to one side. Dean heads right for the bar. He stopped by that afternoon and landed a pitch-hitting job with no problem - show up at 9.30 tonight, the guy’d said, time to show him the ropes and get set up before the big rush of the night, right before the 10.30 show.

While Dean gets comfortable at the bar Sam’s supposed to get into the office off to the rear of the main room and find the files in question. They’re apparently on a flash stick of some kind, not much to go on but at least it’s hard copy. Sam’s supposed to come back by the bar at 10.15, before the show starts, and meet up with Dean to duck out into the alley; but it’s 10.27 now and Sam hasn’t shown and Dean is getting edgy. It shouldn’t have taken Sam ten minutes to case that office, let alone an hour.

10.28. The house lights go down and to the beat of Scorpions’ “Rock You Like A Hurricane” a line of bodies comes into view emerging from the shadows at the back of the stage: six men striding forward shoulder to shoulder, dressed in full firefighting uniform complete with protective face gear and (god) coils of firemen’s hose slung over their left shoulders. Dean hrumphs in his throat, still mostly distracted by Sam’s absence. Solid song.

The strippers take their places arrayed along the lip of the stage, legs planted wide and hips dipping to the beat. The coils of hose thud to the stage, though Dean doubts they’re done with them.

 _It's early morning_  
_The sun comes out_  
_Last night was shaking_  
_And pretty loud..._

Zippers rip down and coats fly back off shoulders in one movement, a purposefully rough gesture but coordinated, and the part of Dean’s mind that isn’t worrying about Sam gives the group a nod of respect. They’re better than he expected at a joint like this. So far, anyway. With the coats gone they’re bare-chested under their long suspendered pants, skin oiled up and glistening under the lights, and Dean squints because there’s something off about the closer of the two tallest men in the centre of the line, something vaguely familiar about the cut of his shoulders, and what the -

 _More days to come_  
_New places to go_  
_I've got to leave_  
_It's time for a show_

Backs to the audience now, asses up in the air -

Facemasks next, drawn off over a long long beat of anticipation. When it’s done, Dean blinks so hard his eyes just about roll back into his head because the vaguely familiar chest in the centre belongs to Sam. Sam is up on stage. Stripping. Sam is stripping in a fireman’s outfit. Sam is dancing and taking off his clothes. Sam is -

_Here I am, rock you like a hurricane  
Here I am, rock you like a hurricane_

Dean isn’t watching the group as a whole anymore and he isn’t watching the bar and he isn’t feeling his body very much because _Sam is stripping_ and for some reason this is making it hard to breathe.

Sam drags down the zipper of his overalls, slinging his suspender straps over his shoulders (when had Sam’s shoulders got so thick anyway?) and teasing a little, and jesus _where has Sam learned how to strip_?? Dean feels like his head’s been hit up sideways by a two-by-four - he feels thick-headed and slow; thinking feels like trudging through thigh-deep water, weighted and untethered at the same time, because now the line of men is starting to air-fuck in earnest, grabbing their crotches and rolling their hips hard with the beat of the music, and his little brother is stripping like he’s been born to do it, _fuck_ , not just his hips but his shoulders and even the tilt of his head feeling the force of his thrusts, mouth hanging open a little and chin tilted so slightly to the side that most people wouldn’t have noticed. Dean notices, and a bolt of heat surges down from his navel. Sam doesn’t know that he gives that look, Dean’s pretty sure; it is utterly un-self-aware, which is most of its effect: the slight chin-tilt, the narrowed eyes, the way his lips fall open a little more than usual.

Dean isn’t watching the other men any more, isn’t even registering their presence, and this is gonna be awkward in the morning because Sam is _stripping_ and as far as Dean’s dick is concerned it might as well be happening two feet away instead of twenty yards but Dean can’t bring himself to care, not with Sam’s naked shoulders rolling under the stage lights and his giant hand dragging the zipperhead down- down- down-

Then his fist over his crotch thrusts down and out, fast, and the fireman pants fly off and to the side and Sam is _wearing a thong_ he’s wearing a bright red thong that strains and curves forwards over his cock and Dean grips the edge of the bar till the tips of his fingers turn white under his fingernails.

They’re down on their knees, now, Sam and the other taller guy, right down at the edge of the stage, playing to the audience, grinding and pumping, still fucking the air with languid rolls of their hips while they work the crowd. They seem to be freeforming here, from what Dean can tell. Sam’s hands are up in his hair and when he turns a little away Dean sees what it does to his brother’s back, the deep-cut furrow between his shoulder blades and the torque and twist of muscle. But strangely the thing that hits him hardest is the expression on Sam’s face -- not because he hasn’t seen it before but because he has, and every time he’s been struck and a little unnerved by what he’s seen: a self-possessed and very _knowing_ exercise of Sam’s own sexuality. He’s seen that look calculated, and he’s seen it earnest and sweet, and once or twice he’s seen it angry and vicious. When Meg was holding them tied up last year in a barn and decided to taunt a roped-up Sam, he saw it then, saw it in Sam’s sneering face and the set of his jaw, the way his eyes flicked up to Meg’s face with naked defiance and _heat_. There was a confidence, a self-awareness about it that rattled Dean somehow, reminded him that to other people Sam didn't look like a kid anymore, that they looked at Sam and saw something adult and virile and strong. It was a weird feeling, even then, even before he woke up in the hospital with this new thing stirring inside him.

Sam comes out to the bar twenty minutes after the lights go down. He’s still got traces of makeup around his eyes and he’s glistening with sweat and he looks goddamn beautiful.

‘So you strip now?’ Dean says, lightly, trying to remember how it’s normal to act around your brother after you’ve just seen him strip and especially how people do it who aren’t desperately hard and concentrating mostly on not rutting up on him right there against the bar. While he figures this out he throws Sam a beer. ‘When’d _that_ happen? And what about the fucking files we came here for?’

His tone’s a little harsher than he means it to be, but Sam’s still flushed and looking just a little pleased with himself and doesn’t seem to notice.

‘When I went back to find Nathan I heard a guy say he’d skipped out tonight, some deal across town, but one of the strippers hadn’t shown up and I just, you know, did our thing.’

Dean’s still trying to process how exactly stripping is ‘their thing’, and twisting the words into some kind of confession from Sam, when he goes on.

‘Told them I’d done it in college and a couple o’ the guys showed me the routine while I did my makeup.’

Dean isn’t sure which part of this to respond to first but his face must do the work for him ‘cause Sam takes a swig of beer and says, a little quieter,

‘Jess’ best friend was in drama and she did us all one Halloween.’ He’s leaning over almost double from the waist over the bar, long fingers playing with his beer bottle, and it’s about the most distracting pose he could strike right now. Dean takes another shot.

‘They _showed_ you the routine,’ he says, flatly, and Sam looks up and pulls a face.

‘Fuck, man, I’m just that good. Then after I told ‘em I left my pay stub in Harmon’s office and swiped the stick.’ He throws something at Dean and Dean’s hand whips up, instinctive, catches a USB stick in his palm. ‘Let’s go watch this shit.’

They watch the files on the USB as soon as they get back to the hotel. It’s some kind of amateur documentary, like the guy was planning to eventually edit stuff together but never got around to it. There’s a lot of small talk and fiddling at first while he’s adjusting some settings on the camera and then a string of obviously contrived questions. First up is a girl maybe in her 20s with brown hair in tight french braids that make her look a lot younger.

‘What drew you here?’ the guy asks, off camera. The girl smiles and looks down below the camera.

‘I craved the truth,’ she said, simply, ‘I chose the laws of the purifying fire. Nothing in my life before ever compared to this. It’s like - I woke up from a dream.’

The next interviewee is a guy, a little older, shaved head. He looks right at the camera. ‘I wanted to work for something that mattered,’ he says, clear and mellow. The guy should do commercials for Farmer’s Insurance. ‘Before this I had no real purpose to my life. Now I follow the laws of the purifying fire.’

The videos all go on like that - eleven of them, all variations on the same themes - finding the truth, finding purpose, all ending with the same phrase. When the next file starts up it’s against a different background - no background at all, really, just a dark screen with blobs of light. It’s disorienting as fuck and it takes them a minute to sort out that they’re looking at a nighttime crowd. The camera seems to be towards the back of the room and someone’s holding it, cause someone bumps into them and the camera jolts for a second. There’s a rustle of noise towards the back of the room and someone chanting and then they both startle a little because there’s a new voice and it’s not human, dark-blooded and whistling through bone.

The thing has only said a few - words? syllables? - when the file cuts out abruptly. They don’t bother asking each other if it was real. They’ve seen enough things from the netherworld to know its voice. For a minute they’re both lost in thought, Sam standing behind Dean’s chair, arms pulled across his chest. .

‘Whattaya think?’ says Dean, finally, mostly to say something. ‘Vengeful spirit? Demon?’

Sam walks across the room and sits on the bed.

‘Typhon shade?’ he says, and starts undressing: shrugs the jacket off, gets his fingers up under his throat to worry at his tie. ‘Or Akuma? Not sure if that’d explain the mutilations, though, if we still think those are related. Cherufe? There was a case in Chile in ‘68 where the transference looked like a flash of fire.’

‘This was a _column_ ,’ says Dean, but he knows how unreliable witness statements can be and really there’s surely a subset of people who would call a column a flash and vice versa. ‘K, whatta we know? They’re into this - culty shit - we’ve got this phrase they all come back to -

‘- laws of the purifying fire-’ prompts Sam.

‘- laws of the purifying fire. Couple months later the there’s some kind of flame in the sky and the compound’s been torched out first anyone gets out there.’ He puts his hands behind his head and presses it forward, cracking his neck. ‘I’m leaning towards Cherufe, which means it’s stuck on the scene in a host for - what - 30 days after the kills?’

‘Bobby always said 27,’ said Sam, ‘but yeah. Either way we’re running down. Better go out there first thing.’

Dean nods. ‘Can you do anything with - whatever that thing was saying?’

‘Lemme have a look,’ says Sam, and Dean trades him places. Sam plugs in a pair of headphones and starts fiddling with the audio. His dress shirt is off and he’s just in his undershirt, pants unbuckled but still hanging loose around his hips. Dean sits on the bed and tries not to think about Sam moving on the stage a few hours before: wide-stance and rolling from from the hips, swinging the hose around, face focused and fierce and yes, enjoying it; the way the muscles in his ass had tightened when he’d jerked it forward in a pants-losing thrust.

‘Hey,’ he says, and taps Sam’s shoulder, gestures towards the hall. Sam lifts the earphones off one ear, mouth hanging open a little in question, hair pushed forward into his face by the band of the headphones. Dean wants to grab the back of his head and bite his lips.

‘Going down to the floor for a bit,’ he says, and leaves.

He gets almost down to the first floor before he misses his phone. It’s in the pocket of his jacket, draped over the bed, and it’s a mark of how much he’s losing it that he could physically leave the room without it. Gun, too.

A little to his own surprise he doesn’t stop on the floor of the casino but keeps going, down the long hallway between the Luxor and the Excalibur and keeps going through the manic dollar-slot area of the Tropicana.

At the MGM he leaves the air-conditioned endless corridors and goes out into the street. It’s hot, even this late at night, and before he goes a block he’s had three people try to sell him bottles of water and been given 12 trading card ads for hookers. The trip when he was 16 he’d collected a full set and kept them in a rubber band at the bottom of his duffel for years.

He’s past Circus Circus, getting close to the Stratosphere when the lights go out: not just the streetlights behind and in front of him but nearly the whole swatch of the strip. He stops walking and tenses up for a long second but there’s no blades coming out of the darkness and no screams of the damned, just the plaintive conversation of a thousand annoyed and slightly frightened people. _Fuck_. A power outage? These places must have backups like crazy, and after a minute a few thready lights do flicker on, pale and green, giving shape to the darkness; but the switch back on to full power doesn’t come, not after five minutes and not after ten. He wanders back towards the centre of the strip, back in sight of Treasure Island and the Palazza, or would be if they were visible at all. There are crowds of people on the sidewalks now, spilling into the street and clutching each other, most of them drunk and all of them angry or scared, or both. Dean hardly notices them, just swings left to move into the streets north of the Strip, away from the crowds and hysteria. He’s got enough going on in his head without any havoc outside it.

For awhile he just walks, moving in the Luxor’s general direction but not really paying attention. When he stumbles on a tiny bar that’s got it’s own back-up generator he goes in and sits for awhile, sips beer and lets the bartender chatter excitedly about the coming financial apocalypse (tied in somehow to the current blackout, in a way Dean doesn’t entirely follow). When he goes into the bathroom he stops and feels a soft shock because he knows this bathroom, knows the strange rockinghorse border in the wallpaper and the stuffed frog that’s on a plaque nailed above the doorframe. He knows it because when he was 10 years old Sam needed to pee and Dad went in and bought a beer so the bartender would let them use the toilets. That means the motel they’d stayed that year must be 5, 6 blocks from here.

He goes outside and hesitates a second. Then he turns back towards the Strip and heads back for the Luxor.

It’s just about dawn when Dean gets back to the hotel, but once he gets past reception, where they’ve got a couple portable units hooked up to a generator, the whole place is a giant easy-bake oven that someone turned on high. It’s hot as sin and it smells like sweat and the only light in the whole cavernous interior of the hotel comes from the weak emergency lights tracking the length of each hallway.

When he opens the door Sam’s sitting on the floor in front of the broken AC unit in just his boxers, head tipped back against the wall to show the long curve of his neck, one leg drawn up into a lazy sprawl. He’s sweaty _everywhere_ : it’s trickling down his chest and stomach, dampening the waistband of his boxers; beading around his nipples till the droplets break apart and track crooked rivulets down his pecs; pooling in the hollow at the base of his throat and under his eyes and heavy enough along his hairline to drip down across his neck.

He’s sweaty everywhere, but Dean notices most the inside of the leg that’s drawn up where a slick of moisture is smeared across Sam’s thigh, like sweaty hands had rubbed there, dragging the hairs on his legs darker and flat with moisture.

Dean walks through the door and says, under his breath but fiercely, _son of a bitch_.

Sam’s on his feet before the door can swing shut.

‘Jesus, Dean, where were you?’ He’s flushed not just across his cheekbones but down his neck and even over his chest and Dean can’t tell if it’s just the heat or if Sam’s really that upset but either way Sam’s skin all pink and damp and practically post-coital is liquefying his brain. He hears himself say ‘dude, chill,’ and then he’s sitting on the end of the closer bed and bending to rip at a bootlace, a little light-headed from the heat and the sight of Sam.

Then Sam’s bare feet are in front of him and Sam’s hands shove him, push one shoulder up so that Dean is forced to look at his face. The kid is pissed off but below that he’s freaked, that particular sad-eyed irrational terror he gets sometimes since Dad died.

‘Hey,’ Dean says, he hopes in a gentler tone, but he isn’t sure cause he’s mostly trying not to react to how good Sam smells, even slick with a night of sweat crusted over him. He slowly opens and closes one of his fists over his knee, fighting to focus. ‘I’m sorry, OK?’ Sam lets go of his shoulder and steps back a little but doesn’t move away.

‘Where were you?’

Dean’s fumbling with his laces again. ‘Nowhere. Walking.’

Sam just keeps staring at him. ‘You just - left the hotel? You left your _phone_ , Dean!’

Dean hears the panic in Sam’s voice and he can’t handle it at all and he says, shortly, ‘Sam, calm the fuck down.’

Sam steps back but stays there, resolutely in Dean’s vision, and Dean makes an angry sound and shoves his boots off with brute force because his hands are shaking too hard to get the laces undone.

‘OK,’ Sam says, so fucking earnest and level-headed, standing right in front of Dean with his hands distractedly raking up the hair at the back of his head, and he’s got his arms up with his elbows out, framing his head, so when Dean looks up all he sees is Sam’s biceps and the patches of dark hair under Sam’s arms and the way his throat is flexing and jumping hard with nerves. He runs his palms hard against the slippery polyester of the bedspread and is glad that it’s dark enough in the room that Sam can’t see his crotch.

Sam’s still talking.

‘OK,’ he’s saying, ‘k, listen, this is - this is going to sound weird, well it _is_ weird, but - listen I think we just need to get this out in the open so we can, like, we’ll - we’ll laugh and then it’s over, but things haven’t felt right lately and I - you need to tell me why.’

Dean breathes, and digs his fingernails into the bedspread, keeps his voice light.

‘Whattaya mean Sam? Things are fine, we’re fine.’

Sam fixes him with a stare and crosses his arms, now, across his chest. He speaks quick and certain, like he’s had this list in his head for awhile.

‘We never talk in the car anymore,’ he says, unexpectedly. ‘I mean, ok, we do, but not the same, it’s like - it’s like you’re going down a list of topics to get it over with. And when we’re _not_ talking it’s weird, too, it’s _awkward_ , Dean, we’re awkward. And you never - you -’ Sam breaks off and trembles, once, hard, but his voice stays firm, ‘you never _touch_ me anymore.’ Dean tries for an eyeroll and Sam flushes darker. ‘I mean - you know - in passing. Last week you dropped that silver crucifix cause you wouldn’t touch my fingers.’

‘Shouldn’t have let go of it till I had it,’ says Dean, automatically, but his insides are twisting in on themselves. He feels like he might throw up. Sam’s looking at him, angry and resigned and a little bit sad.

‘I just don’t know what - why,’ he says, after a beat, his face somehow whitening under its flush. ‘Did I do something? If I did, I wanna know. Did I? Do something?’’

 _You grew up so goddamned beautiful_ , Dean thinks fiercely, but he keeps his face smooth, mildly concerned. Big brotherly.

‘Course not,’ he scoffs, ‘chrissake, Sam. Your head’s just messing with you. We’re just fine, same as we’ve always been.’

Sam’s face deflates, so slightly that no one else would notice. He goes on without expression, almost to himself. ‘It’s just - it’s like I repulse you. Like it’d burn you to touch my skin.’

 _It would_ , Dean thinks.

There doesn’t seem to be anything else to say right then so he goes into the bathroom and peels his shirt up over his head. Its soaked right through and an ugly grease-smudge brown in the armpits. It’s dark in the bathroom without the flashlight Sam had propped up on the TV, and Dean has to fumble for the bathtub taps before he can get his head under and douse it in cool water. He stays under for a minute or two, sick from the heat and gut still twisting with anxiety. He doesn’t reach for a towel when he turns off the water, just sits back on his heels and tips his head forward a little, lets the water run over his chest and trickle down to dampen the waistband of his jeans.

When he’s blinked enough that the biggest drops have cleared from his eyes Sam’s standing in the doorway. Dean’s hands tighten involuntarily against the bath mat, muscles jerking tensely, and then he’s as close to crying as he’s been since the hospital cause he _misses_ Sam, misses their easy camaraderie, misses the teasing and the serious, staccato conversations about cases and feeling like stepping into their motel room was home. Awkward, like this, he doesn’t have home, doesn’t have somewhere to turn it off.

He would give anything to just cut this out of himself, excise it, burn it, salt it, kill it, because it’s going to kill everything that he and Sam are to each other.

He’d rather have died in the hospital.

‘Hey,’ says Sam, voice garbled and thready, and he sinks down on the floor beside Dean, knees against Dean’s thigh. He raises his hands like he wants to touch or grab or hold onto something but just lets them hang in the air a second and lets one fall, brings the other up tentatively to brush against Dean’s bicep. ‘Hey, Dean - Dean, just, look at me.’ A beat. ‘Dean, _please_.’

On instinct Dean puts his head up then and Sam hitches forward, catches himself but stays bent towards him, one hand still on his arm. Sam’s _so close_ and Dean crab-crawls back a little, lurching, landing on his ass, but Sam crawls after him, taut and determined, and _jesus_ the kid is actually between his ankles now and still coming, one hand up on the rim of the bathtub, half-crouched over Dean’s thighs.

‘ _Dean_ ,’ he says, firmer now, and then the hand on the end of the bathtub slips. He lands almost on top of Dean, arms braced on either side of his chest and knees sprawled crooked across his thighs. He pulls back, but only an inch or two, and Dean stares at his face and feels his breath hitch in his chest. He can’t see much in the dimness, just the glance of light when his eyes flick up. It doesn’t matter. He knows Sam’s face better than any other thing in the world.

Then Sam leans closer, and Dean stops breathing except in tiny jerking hitches.

‘Is it this?’ Sam says, and kisses him on the mouth. For one long moment it’s just Sam’s lips pressing, trembling against his. Then Dean surges up and hooks a hand behind Sam’s neck and grapples them together, too many limbs in too small a space and hands indiscriminately eager. With part of his mind he feels Sam’s fingers running, skimming over his chest and settling high on his thigh, feels the heat of his body, but mostly he’s just thinking about Sam’s mouth, the warm wet openness of it and the way that Sam’s pressing against him and kissing him fast and desperate. Then he yanks again and Sam’s knees buckle around Dean’s thigh and he can feel his brother’s cock hard and hot and so fucking close to his skin. The sound Sam makes just about makes him come right there in his jeans.

‘Sam,’ he gasps.

Then the lights come back on, no warning or flickering warm-up, just white fluorescent glare so bright he’s blinded for a minute. When he can get his eyes open Sam has rocked back onto his knees and is sitting there with his hands curiously folded in his lap, like he’s a little kid.

‘Is it that?’ he says. ‘Is that - what’s been different?’

He’s looking at Dean perfectly straight-on and Dean’s struggling to look at him at all. He’s looking instead at the toilet and the bath and the water dripping from his hair and rolling jerkily down his chest. Out in the main room the AC kicks back in with a shudder.

‘ _Dean_!’ Sam says, and it’s like a punch in the sternum. Dean looks at him.

‘OK,’ he says, ‘listen,’ and he’s astonished but relieved to find that his throat still works, that he can still suck air past lips that have kissed Sam. ‘Listen, ok? I won’t - I’m not - I, we shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry, it’s - you don’t have to do that. For me.’

Sam studies him, eyes narrowed and jaw twitching a little.

‘Is that what you think? That I did it _for you_?’ He’s got his hands open now and splayed out over his kneecaps, gripping so hard his fingers are red and then white. ‘Jesus christ, Dean, I don’t think incest is high on the list of things generally done out of kindness.’

Dean winces at the word and it takes him a minute to put what Sam’s saying together.

‘What,’ he says, no inflection, like Sam just said _guess what I found in the vending machine downstairs_. Sam's got his jaw raised and he's breathing heavy and for a minute the only noise in the place is the sound of Sam's lungs keeping him in the world and the hiss of the air conditioner. They're staring each other-- not down, exactly, but grasping each other with their eyes. Dean's not sure if it's the beginning or the end.

Then the alarm clock in the other room blips back into life and starts beeping fretfully. They both startle and glance away from each other. Dean drags a hand over his face, squeezes his eyes shut tight for a second.

'Chukra,’ he says, ‘or whatever it is - gotta check that out.’ Dean can’t believe he’s saying it, can hear his voice saying it but can’t believe that Sam’s mouth was just on his and now he’s calling halt, but the tiny part of him that’s scared as fuck and the big part of him that’s had Gank The Thing as rule number one for 22 years are banding together and pushing him to his feet.  Sam gets up too and puts a hand hard in the centre of his chest, holding him in the room.

'Later,' he says, a statement not a question, and Dean draws in a breath and dips his head in what might be taken as a nod. They'll deal with it later. ( _Leave your shit at the door, boys. No room for it out there unless you wanna end up dead_.)

It’s about an hour’s drive to the compound, according to the maps. For a few minutes Dean makes aggressive small talk. If it isn't a Cherufe what's the next most likely? Where do they think it had come from? Did Sam remember Pastor Jim’s book about fire demons in the Argive? After a bit he falls silent, though, and it's just the smooth thwack-thwack of the tires on concrete. Weirdly, the tension's bearable. They got really good at leaving their shit at the door.

It becomes a lot less bearable when they blow a tire forty minutes out, just as they’re about to turn off the paved highway onto a dirt road. All they’ve got in the trunk is a thin-rubbered emergency wheel cause they ran over some nails a few days out from Bobby’s and used their real spare then, meant to pick up a new one on their way out of Vegas. Dean swears under his breath and looks down the dirt road. Its surface is scored with ruts and studded with rocks. He presses his lips together.

‘Gonna need a real tire t’get down there,’ he says, ‘fuck.’

While Dean changes the tire Sam stands by the side of the road, squinting into the sun with his hands shoved into his pockets. Every time Dean looks over his shoulder or reaches to put the wrench down he catches Sam watching him with an expression on his face that makes Dean’s stomach come unpinned and lurch up into his throat. Like Sam would maybe like to come over and drag his hands all over Dean’s greasy skin and lay him down right there in the dirt and dust in Baby’s shadow. But Sam doesn’t move. When they get back in the car and head back to Vegas the silence lasts 5 minutes till Sam leans over and switches on talk radio.

Dean lets him.

It takes them an hour to find a garage and another to get the tire changed out and by the time they’re back at the junction in the road it’s early afternoon and Dean isn’t sure what’s gonna be the bigger struggle today, killing this thing or keeping his hands off Sam. Money’s on the latter. He’s suppressed too many fantasies over the last couple months, woken up wet and guilty from too many dreams to not have an excellent and detailed idea of just what he’d like to do to Sam. Lay him out across the back seat, for one, take off all his clothes real slow and torturous and maybe some dirty talk but maybe just the silence and Dean letting the hoarseness of his breathing do the talking for him. Get his shoulders pressed up underneath Sam’s thighs, hook his arms up round Sam’s hips and hold them down while he sucks him off. Push him up against the Impala. In some of the dreams it’s Dean who’s bent over the hood and Sam who’s pressed up behind him and unbuckling his belt and -

‘Dean!’ says Sam, and Dean realises he’s said it three times. He hits the brake and Sam’s fluttering the map towards the south. ‘Just missed the turn. Should be just a mile or two now.’

There’s not much left of the compound, really, just a few charcoaled walls and some rubble. Sam thumbs his phone’s screen as they get out of the car.

‘OK, he’s stuck here for - another twenty. You got the bowl?’

They scrape a hole in the dirt for the copper pan and Sam leans over it a minute, shaking out powder and then setting a scrap of coiled grass alight just over the pan so it drops, flaming, into the bowl. The powder goes up in a flash and Sam mutters in Latin for a minute.

When he gets to his feet Dean looks across at him expectantly. Sam gives a tiny shrug.

‘That shoulda done it. Might take a minute.’

It takes two, and then Dean glimpses a figure on a cliff up behind them, just standing there, watching them, perfectly still. It’s humanoid and pale against the rock but even at this distance his skin crawls. It might have been human a few weeks ago but it’s not anymore.

They don’t worry about it leaving; it’s perfectly still the whole hour it takes them to get up the cliffs to where it’s standing close to the edge. Dean keeps wanting to not let it out of his gaze, not cause he thinks it’ll leave but just because the fucking thing gives him the creeps. He’s also getting a little rattled by how close he and Sam are having to move together over the rock, by how much climbing involves muscles working in close proximity to his face and how obscene Sam sounds when he’s breathing heavily after a vertical stretch.

When they finally get to the top of the rocks the guy’s facing east and it’s the man from the videos with the voice like an insurance commercial. Or it has his face, anyway. It’s dressed in the same clothes he’d worn in the video, caked now with dirt and dust and something that might be blood.

‘Hey,’ Sam says evenly, and Dean would even prefer right now that it was a regular demon. At least then the black eyes would give them a clue. Cherufes had no real tells, no way of knowing who was in control.

He steps up a little, edges just a little in front of Sam. The thing looks at them without expression.

‘Go ahead and try,’ it says, and it’s strange to hear so blustery a phrase said in perfect monotone. Sam shuffles a little and Dean knows he’s got the salt and steel ready under his jacket. He eases his forearm back and brushes against Sam’s arm. _Just a second_.

‘Leave him,’ Dean says, the familiar burn of adrenaline flooding his gut, ‘and we’ll let you go.’

The thing laughs, and if Dean thought it was creepy before, they’ve just entered the uncanny valley of horror shows. Its mouth opens but nothing moves, the tongue or the lips or the jaw, just a still gaping mouth and the sound of tinny laughter coming out of its maw. When it speaks its voice is mild and sounds like rotting food.

‘If one of you wants to fight me for this sack of meat, do it. If you both come at me I jump off the cliff and take this useless shit with me.’ A buzz of hornets erupts in Dean’s brain and he grabs for Sam’s arm.

‘No,’ he says. To Sam.

‘Dean,’ Sam’s hissing, ‘my Latin’s better, you know it, I know more variants, and I’m almost as good with the blades.’

‘You’re just as good,’ says Dean, automatically proud, ‘I don’t fucking care. No.’

Sam’s lips widen out and thin. ‘So what? We let the thing go? We need to destroy it while it’s inside this guy, otherwise it’ll find someone else. It could kill people, I mean, forever.’

Dean’s shaking his head almost imperceptibly. ‘What’s the option, Sammy?’

Sam squints and his forehead furrows.

‘If I can weaken it enough, you could come in and finish it off,’ he said, ‘all I’ve gotta do is keep it from going over the edge.’ Dean stares at him.

‘Did you see what it did at the compound? You’re strong, Sam, but you’re not that strong.’ He brushes his hands quick down the sides of his head in frustration. ‘Let the thing go.’

‘Dean-’

‘Sam! I don’t wanna but - what’s the alternative? It’s not worth risking our lives.’

Sam’s staring at him. ‘Since when?’ he says, and it’s a little harsh.

 _Since you’re what’s being risked_ , thinks Dean, but he doesn’t say it, because the thing is moving towards them along the lip of the cliff. And no matter how it plays, them taking this thing on is dangerous to Sam, even if Dean takes the lead. Because he could lose. He’s not dumb enough to think that he’s ironclad. He lives like that, sure, but one of the things he knows is that you only live like that if you don’t particularly care whether it’s true. Today he cares. If he goes down, nothing to stop the thing from going for Sam. Unless -

‘Hey, bitch,’ he says, and his voice is so gruff he almost doesn’t recognise it as his own. ‘If I take you on (‘Dean,’ says Sam, and he mutters _shut up Sammy_ ) you promise that he gets away, no matter what?’

The thing observes him impassively.

‘Sure,’ it says, and Dean takes a breath.

‘You swear by the Oath of Ma’at?’

Bobby used this a few years ago, he knows: an old Egyptian spell, little known but binding. If the spirit tries to break it, it dissolves into fragments and is sucked down to the underworld.

The way the thing flinches ever so slightly reassures him that his memory is right.

‘Yes,’ it says. ‘I swear by Ma’at. Take me on alone and he walks away, however it goes.’

Dean turns his body halfway towards Sam and holds out his hands without taking his eyes off the thing. When nothing lands in them he huffs, not angry but in haste, like Sam might have just not noticed.

‘Gimme the stuff, Sam.’

Sam’s looking at Dean not angry or scared, just like he’s bat-shit insane.

‘What? No - jesus christ, Dean -’

‘Sam! Now!’ He’s scrabbling for it himself now, digging under Sam’s coat.

Sam puts up a hand and shoves Dean hard, back away from the cliff, hard enough that he stumbles and almost goes down on his ass. He looks right at the thing and says, clear and loud, ‘Do it, motherfucker, no deal’.

The thing twists its mouth once into a caricature of a smile and takes a step back into thin air. There’s no sound, just the dull slap of the body on the rocks.

Dean looks at Sam and it’s _how fucking dare you_ and it’s _dad would never_ and it’s _why_.

‘It’s gonna kill another fifty people Sam,’ he says, raspy and dry.

Sam grunts noncommittally and picks up the gun. ‘It’s not gonna kill you,’ he says.

Coming down the hill they pass again by the burnt-out compound and Dean veers off, grunting at Sam to go on. He needs to get his head on straight but he can’t fucking do that with Sam around, Sam looking at him like he thinks Dean is the sort of person he’s definitely not, like he’s willing to give Dean something that Dean can’t have or let Sam give. He can’t fucking do it because looking at Sam he sees all his failures projected onto his brother’s face, onto the moles and dimples and bones that he sees behind his eyelids.

He goes as far as the building where they found the altar and where the guy had taped the first of his video blogs, the one with the girl in braids, destroyed not just by the Cherufe but long before that by sincere but fucked-up, misguided obsession with a world of gods and demons. To be fair Dean would guess that by most definitions he’s obsessed with it too. After all, the great fact of his life isn’t the endless miles logged in the Impala, however much the car might feel like home. It isn’t the strangely comforting ubiquity of broken vending machines and bedspreads with cigarette burns in motel rooms across America, or the restlessness that comes from never unpacking all the way. There are other people who live out of suitcases and who drive a lot and live in motels. But they can watch Creature from the Black Lagoon without thinking compulsively about the weapons or spells that might kill it. The great fact of Dean’s life is real simple. It’s knowing that devils and monsters and the things that feed on human souls are real.

He also, of course, knows you can fight them, knows about salt rock and steel and knows just how to angle the blade of a knife. But the thing he has in common with these people burnt in their beds, he guesses the thing that’s throbbing in his skin, is the reminder that the entire fact of his existence has been a footnote in a more important story.

When he follows Sam out from the enclosure of the cliffs the sun is touching the western horizon and washing the rocks behind the compound with ochre-red light. He steps into a scene awash in flickering gold. The flat stretch of the desert is running away for a hundred miles in front of him and a wind is scudding little clouds across the sunset sky, their shadows thin and fleeting over the drought-cracked desert. Behind them the earth is dimming to dusk, shadows from the bluffs behind them tumbling towards the east.

Sam’s standing by the Impala with his hands thrust down into the pockets of his jacket, facing away towards the west and full into the liquid light of the sun’s last drowning. As Dean comes up behind him Sam takes one hand out and flexes it, flecks of dried blood still spotted over the knuckles. He tips his head back and the sun seizes him, lights his face on fire like he’s some pre-Promethean demi-god and smudges its planes in light and shadow, and Dean stops perfectly still and every nerve in his body hums towards Sam and every breath of air from his punch-bag lungs shudders in his chest.  

Sam turns a little towards him and Dean sees in one thready heartbeat that he’s nearly crying and that his face has lost most of its elasticity, as if some great emotion were dragging down his skin and digging deep grooves across his forehead. There’s no longer anything savage or feral in his expression: all the anger and brutal ferocity that was in evidence on top of the cliff has burnt away, run out.

‘Sam,’ Dean says, with an effort, and his voice sounds strange to him, swallowed in the sun-drenched desert and the shadows.

Sam meets his eyes.

‘Let’s just get back,’ he says, thick, like his mouth is dust-dry, and opens the passenger door. Dean takes a quick step forward and catches it with the heel of his hand.

‘No,’ he says, not yelling, but his voice is taut and desperate and so is his face. He notices in a vague distracted way that his skin feels tight and shriveled, like it’s trying to crawl and squirm away from this moment. ‘Sam, we gotta finish this, man. We can’t - I can’t do this.’

Sam turns on him. ‘Why not?’

‘You know the fuck why not.’ He feels like he hasn’t blinked for too long and maybe he hasn’t but -

‘ _Tell me why_ ,’ Sam says again, sitting now on the hood of the car and pressing his hands flat against the paint. Dean wants, wildly, in exactly the same moment to take Sam in his arms and to punch him hard across the jaw. ‘Dean, _tell_ me.’ He’s visibly forcing himself to calm down; the tendons in his neck are fluttering and he’s breathing hard and with effort. The sunset is lighting his cheeks so pink that he looks not just flushed but _stained_ with it, hot and slick with sweat in the curve of his neck and _jesus_.

‘Who’s it gonna hurt?’ Sam says. ‘It’s you and me, man. It’s just you and me. Whatta you fucking want? I think… I think I can learn to get you off and -’

Dean would start laughing if he wasn’t suspended in some kind of surreal sensory bubble, which is really inconvenient cause the things that Sam is saying deserve some kind of answer, but all he can do is stare at him, stare at the rust-red cliffs behind him, stare at the hair curling around Sam’s ears and the slanted pools of his eyes. He realises in a shattering rush not just the intensity of his need for Sam, transcending any consideration or convention, but the fact that what’s between them is the only thing stronger than the crippling force of dogma and toxic self-abnegation that wrecked their father and fucked the wretched people in this cult. It’s no longer a matter of want, but a point of necessity. He and Sam are each other’s trump cards against whatever life might deal them. They can’t play the game without each other. It’s as simple as that.

Well, it’s Vegas, after all. All in.

‘You won’t need to learn,’ he says, in a voice not quite his own. ‘You could - jesus, Sammy, you could get me off just by standing there.’ He swallows. ‘K here, listen, I’m only saying this once: I want you. I mean, like that. Not just like that, but - you know - that too.’

He raises his eyebrows a little and Sam says, breathy and soft, ‘OK.’

‘OK?’ repeats Dean, a little stupidly, cause his head is breaking right open and he also can’t help but envy Sam’s ability to take apart the world and let it fall watch it fall as it will and be somehow still _alright_.

‘Yeah,’ says Sam, ‘I mean, yes. I want - yes.’ He’s stepping up to Dean as he talks but it’s Dean who takes three quick hitching breaths and steps right up against him and wraps his hands up in Sam’s hair and kisses first. Sam stumbles back a step and then gets his balance and pushes back and for a minute it’s more like grappling than anything else, but without hands or arms, cause their hands are all over each other, Dean’s still up scraping over Sam’s scalp and Sam’s first over Dean’s biceps, gripping them tight, and then down to slide just big thumbs down past the line of his belt. When Dean feels them brush the curve of his ass he jerks so hard against Sam they stumble together again and hit up this time against the Impala, slide against the passenger door till Sam’s ass is up on the side of the hood. He opens his legs a little and Dean’s pressing between them and kissing Sam so hard it’s sloppy, it’s the worst kissing he’s done since he was a kid, really he’s just trying to taste Sam as much as he fucking can but Sam doesn’t seem to mind. He arches his back a bit to peel off his shirt and tips forward to rub the line of his cock against Dean’s tummy and Dean just about shoots right then cause his brother’s up on the hood of his car looking like some bronzed broad-shouldered Apollo and _wanting him_.

‘Stop,’ he gasps, ‘stop, stop, we can’t - not here - Sam fuck I’m not gonna last -’

‘Who said anything about lasting?’ says Sam, eyes narrowed to laughing slits and his mouth curling up at one corner, but Dean summons all of his Winchester will and steps back from the hood, moving towards the side of the car.

‘We’re not doing this here,’ he says, breathless, fingers groping for the door handle. ‘I just - c’mon, Sam,  I don’t wanna think of this sad fucking place every time I - er, we - you know.’ He’s trying to play it light, doesn’t want to get into it, but he does not want this ill-omened graveyard of misguided devotion to be anywhere near them the first time he has Sam. The first time Sam has him.

He doesn’t say it, of course, just gives Sam his best bedroom eyes.

Sam looks at him for a minute.

‘OK,’ he says, and slides off the hood.

Dean’s stomach lurches and his head turns so giddy he actually fumbles getting into the car, puts it into the wrong gear and jesus he hopes this wears off, except wait no he doesn’t, if he has to let Sam drive for the rest of his life he’ll do it for this.

The whole way back the air thrums between them with the awareness of exactly how low each others’ jeans have slipped, the musky smell of their sweat, the knowledge of just how little they’d have to reach. They don’t touch each other after they get in the car, afraid to break this intoxicating surreal feeling between them, the air too thick now for anything but total immolation.

As they cross through the big atrium of the Luxor towards the bank of elevators on the back wall Dean is consciously fighting back nausea from nerves, yes, and the feeling of being untethered from the world. He keeps thinking he’ll open his eyes and find himself tipped a little sideways to the ground.

The whole way up in the elevator he feels Sam’s eyes on him. By the time they get to their door Dean’s shaking with adrenaline and he has to swipe the door card three times before the door clicks open. He stops just inside and steps a little to the right, reflexively, but instead of moving into the room Sam hesitates just behind him. Dean can’t quite see or feel him and he doesn’t grope for the light switch, just puts a hand a little out from his body, an unfocused impulsive little gesture, and says, ‘Sam, I-’

And then Sam’s pulling him around, pushes him briefly into the wall and then turns again and shoves his own back against it, hard, pulling Dean forward onto him with both big forearms, and he slides his ass and back a little way down the wall so that his face is level with Dean’s, not that Dean’s really measuring distance just at the moment because he’s fumbling crazy and out of his mind for his brother’s mouth. His actual fucking _chest_ is hurting with how bad he wants Sam’s lips on his. Then Sam’s hands are holding his face in a vise and kissing, kissing, kissing.

Sam’s swaying into him, hips high against Dean’s tummy and shoulders hunched up and forwards, rolling with the press of their bodies. Then Sam lurches off of the wall, careering them unsteadily towards the bed. Dean’s calf hits the end of the mattress and he goes over backwards and then Sam has an arm planted on either side of Dean’s chest and is still wearing way too many clothes but -- fuck, if Sam would stop kissing him for just a second then maybe he could make a contribution to this thing. Right now about all he can manage is -- well, he’d meant to hook a foot around Sam’s thigh and pry himself free to get in the game but somehow instead his heels are wedged up right over Sam’s ass and Sam’s crotch is grinding hard against his and Sam’s _not wearing pants_.

‘Fuck!’ says Dean, and scrabbles at his own belt. There’s a lot of twisting and bumping of heads and they stop and kiss some more because it’s fucking distracting but eventually Dean says, ‘Sammy, kneel - guh, ungh, keep doing that - wait, ok, kneel up.’ He kneels up himself and they’re facing each other, breathing long and slow and ragged. Dean peels off his jeans and pulls Sam onto his lap so Sam’s thighs are bracketing his and his mouth is wet and open, dragging between Sam’s pecs. When he brushes sideways against a nipple Sam lets his head fall back and arches into Dean, hips straining hard into his lap, and Dean has to grab quick at the root of his cock to keep from coming.

‘Sammy,’ he says, lips still against Sam’s chest, hot and slick, ‘fuck, _fuck_ you’re - hnnnnggngn’ because Sam is dipping his head to bite along Dean’s neck and his hair is brushing against the underside of Dean’s jaw.

He keeps one hand at the base of Sam’s spine and fumbles the other between them and pushes -- fuck fuck -- he makes a rough, disbelieving noise cause he’s pushing his hand into Sam’s boxers and slipping his hand around Sam’s cock. It’s big, jesus, slick and hard inside his fist and it’s one of those seconds that last for a year or two. Sam makes a husky kind of noise that goes right to Dean’s groin and he’s so hard now he’s hurting, slick and oversensitive. Sam’s hands still haven’t gone much below his neck, they’ve mostly been pawing and grappling at his head, which Dean is kinda into it turns out. Sam’s thigh shifts harder against Dean and then - shit - he’s on his back and Sam’s on top of him. They grapple a little, rolling each other over across the bed, cocks bumping and brushing against each other through their boxers and skin effervescent with adrenaline and lust. Sam gets Dean pinned back on the bed, the whole of his long body crushing Dean gentle into the mattress, and pumps his hips the tiniest bit, just enough for the movement to grind their cocks together.

‘Ugggnh,’ says Dean, and rolls them right off the bed. There’s some more breathy man-handling and then Dean ends up with his back against the wall and Sam down on his knees in front of him, running his tongue out over his lips and licking the head of Dean’s cock. There’s a few minutes of sucking, exploratory and hungry, and then Sam half-laughs and sits back on his heels and looks ruefully up at him.

‘I’m so bad at this!’ he says, shaking his head, half-asphyxiated and covered with drool.

‘You’re perfect at it,’ says Dean, and yeah half the skin on his cock is gonna be tender tomorrow but it’s true anyway. He pulls Sam up and back against him and they melt together. He thinks one of them might be babbling, but he doesn’t know which.

Sam reaches down and gets his hand round both their dicks, doesn’t pump just holds them together so the ridge of his head drags against the top of Dean’s and it’s so hot and wet, coiling an ache through Dean’s pelvis that’s sharp and heavy at the same time, and he says,

‘Ahh - ahh - uuuuuh.’

Sam’s panting, dragging on the air like it’s syrup, and he’s jacking their cocks together now, veins popped all down his forearm. Dean’s looking at Sam and he can’t help making these punched-out little breaths cause Sam’s so fucking beautiful: mouth just open with beads of sweat standing on his shorter upper lip, nostrils flaring a little for air, his hair sticking in damp strands over pink-flushed cheekbones.

Dean feels it when he starts to hit, lets his hands drop a little further and grips them round Sam’s ass.

‘ _Sam_ ,’ he says, and Sam gasps loud and gets his other hand up around the back of Dean’s head and that’s how it is the first time, coming almost together, Sam spurting over his fist before Dean’s cock has stopped jerking.

They stay on the floor for awhile after, sprawled out more than sitting. Dean’s back is still against the wall and he’s playing with Sam’s hair, twisting it in his fingers, skimming a hand close enough that he can feel the individual strands across his palm, and he thinks for anything to feel like this there’s gotta be hell to pay.

He’ll pay it.

 

The next morning Sam comes into the bathroom while Dean’s brushing his teeth and grabs his ass, which Dean likes a fucking lot. Then he sits up on the lip of the sink and dangles something in front of Dean’s face. It’s a leather patch sewn onto a thong.

Dean chokes so hard he gets toothpaste up his nose and yells for awhile, cause that fucking hurts. Then he comes out into the main room, still laughing to himself, and opens up the laptop.

‘C’mere,’ he says, and it doesn’t take long to find: “XXX-rated Wenches Plunder Pirate of His Love-Spoils”.

‘His _love-spoils_??’ says Sam, when they’re watching it through a second time. He’s sitting on Dean’s lap and rubbing his ass soft but steady over Dean’s cock. Dean makes a grumbly noise.

‘Didn’t ask my opinion on the name. Not cool, wenches.’

Sam watches, and while he does he puts one of his hands down Dean’s boxers and starts to fondle his balls.

‘That’s quite good, what you did there,’ he says, mock-condescending but getting husky. ‘You fucking stud.’

‘I _am_ a stud,’ says Dean, and he hits the laptop closed and pulls Sam’s mouth down onto his.

 

It’s an hour later. They’re about to pull the door of the room shut behind them when Sam stops with his hand on the handle, hesitates. Dean shoots him a sideways glance.

'Ok?'

Sam does something with his lips, rolls his tongue in front of his teeth.

'I just -' he looks sideways at Dean, pinking a bit at the sentiment. 'I, I hate to leave it, you know? As if - nothing happened here.'

Dean looks past Sam’s shoulder into the bedroom, bland and corporate and beige and last night his favourite place in all of earth and heaven. He almost makes a joke; but instead he steps up, close and a little awkward, and brushes his knuckles along the line of Sam's jaw.

'Nothing did,' he says, firmly. ‘Sam, nothing _did_ happen there.’ He drags his palms down over Sam’s arms and splays them flat against Sam’s chest. He can feel the beat of his brother’s heart kicking back against his hand. ‘Sammy, it happened _here_.'


End file.
